Weather is a literary specialty, and no untrained hand can turn out a good article on it
Mark TwainRead
Man proposes, but God blocks the game.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Humans make plans, but ultimately it is a higher power that decides the outcomes.
This quote by Mark Twain highlights the often unpredictable nature of life. While humans can set goals and make plans, there are circumstances and forces beyond our control that can alter our paths, reminding us of the limitations of our agency and the influence of fate or divine intervention.
Themes
PlansFateControlLifeDivine
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about resilience, one might say, 'As Mark Twain once noted, 'Man proposes, but God blocks the game,' reminding us that we must adapt to lifeβs surprises.
More from Mark Twain
All quotes βThe easy part of being an artist is figuring out the message that everyone else is ready to hear. The hard part is waiting for the proper lull to make the announcement.
Mark TwainRead
You can't reason with your heart; it has its own laws, and thumps about things which the intellect scorns.
Mark TwainRead
To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.
Mark TwainRead
Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.
Mark TwainRead
In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.
Mark TwainRead
Similar quotes
Let us take a patriot, where we can meet him; and, that we may not flatter ourselves by false appearances, distinguish those marks which are certain, from those which may deceive; for a man may have the external appearance of a patriot, without the constituent qualities; as false coins have often lustre, though they want weight.
Samuel JohnsonRead
Suns are extinguished or become corrupted, planets perish and scatter across the wastes of the sky; other suns are kindled, new planets formed to make their revolutions or describe new orbits, and man, an infinitely minute part of a globe which itself is only an imperceptible point in the immense whole, believes that the universe is made for himself.
Baron D'HolbachRead
Those instrumental goods which should serve to maintain the life and health of all human beings should be produced by the least possible labour of all.
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So I should be aware of the dangers of self-consciousness, but at the same time, Iβll be plowing through the fog of all these echoes, plowing through mixed metaphors, noise, and will try to show the core, which is still there, as a core, and is valid, despite the fog. The core is the core is the core. There is always the core, that canβt be articulated. Only caricatured.
Dave EggersRead
For the superior morality, of which we hear so much, we too would desire to be thankful: at the same time, it were but blindness to deny that this superior morality is properly rather an inferior criminality, produced not by greater love of Virtue, but by greater perfection of Police; and of that far subtler and stronger Police, called Public Opinion.
Thomas CarlyleRead
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning.
Henry David ThoreauRead